Chinese Red Cross volunteers store relief items in Xian, in the southern Shaanxi region.

Strengthening capacities
Capacity building requires that the people who will benefit from a project participate in it as much as possible in order to achieve sustainability. The Federation’s development programmes are based on an analysis of the vulnerabilities and capacities of those involved.

Projects for power
Capacity building is about increasing the ability of a National Society to achieve the Movement’s humanitarian objectives. In that context, the Federation developed in 2002 the Project planning process, a methodology to provide the Red Cross Red Crescent with a common approach and terminology for planning projects.

It includes a standard training course of 40 hours and an interactive CD-Rom. By December 2002, more than 380 people from 50 National Societies had been trained. Since June 2002, this methology has become the Federation’s standardized planning tool.

The Federation also provided National Society leaders with a standardized training package to help them run their societies more efficiently. This means gathering the different training initiatives for National Society leaders into an integrated curriculum.

During in 2002, two leadership development programmes were completed with the participation of 47 National Society leaders from the Asia-Pacific, Africa and Americas regions.

Assessing capacity
Disaster preparedness programmes exist in 120 National Societies and, in 2002, the Federation supported more than 60 societies in disaster management planning, structures, systems and resources.

Vulnerability and capacity assessment (VCA) is one of the disaster planning tools used to identify the strengths and weaknesses of National Societies’ disaster
management systems. Its methodology involves communities from the very start of the process.

VCA outcomes help National Societies to set up programmes to mitigate loss of life and property during disasters, and to plan for risk reduction and disaster response alongside recovery programmes. In 2002, the National Societies undertaking VCA included Albania, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Mongolia, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda, Viet Nam and Yemen.

A training methodology was also introduced into global workshops, providing 20 National Society local staff in all five continents with local VCA facilitators.

Lessons from transition
The secretariat launched the National Societies in transition project in January 2002, to review progress in organizational development in the decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The project documented practices and events that have affected the functioning of National Societies in Armenia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. Based on their capacities and opportunities for growth, this project validates organizational development efforts by identifying the impact of such interventions.

Getting from giving
The first Red Cross Red Crescent fund-raising "skillshare" took place in the Netherlands in October, with 20 National Society participants pronouncing it a success.

Sessions were led by international leaders in fund-raising. The key areas of skill development included fund-raising from companies, getting the most out of the Internet and developing major donation programmes.

	Malaka, an Afghan Red Crescent volunteer, displays her first-aid certificate.   Support for women in Afghanistan Training of women in community-based first aid was conducted in secret during the six-year Taliban regime. Despite the restrictions imposed on women working, the Afghan Red Crescent managed to train 980 female volunteers by the end of 2001. Two million basic health services are provided annually through the Red Crescent’s 51 clinics, run mainly by women. Almost 180 women are employed in the Red Crescent’s health clinics compared with 154 men. Of the services provided annually, 77 per cent benefit women and children.

A gender perspective
All Red Cross Red Crescent programmes should benefit men and women equally, according to their different needs and with the input and equal participation of both sexes at all levels.

The Federation's policy on gender establishes the basis to ensure that gender differences are taken into account in relation to disaster relief, disaster preparedness, health and promotion of humanitarian values.

The year 2002 saw the production of a gender training manual designed to increase awareness of the link between gender and effective programming. The CD-Rom contains 20 case studies and provides examples of how gender consideration can increase the quality of National Societies' work.

Encouraging recovery
The main aim of the Better Programming Initiative (BPI) is to develop the Federation's capacity to plan and implement post-conflict and disaster relief and rehabilitation programmes in a way that encourages sustainable recovery.

It does this by providing staff and volunteers with an analytical tool, which helps to ensure that programmes strengthen local capacities and avoid reinforcing inequality. It also aims to promote reconciliation through better analysis and understanding of rela-tionships between people.

Since 1998, the BPI has been used as a tool to assess the positive and negative impacts of Federation and National Society programming, especially in post-conflict and social violence contexts.

The Federation's involvement in BPI was piloted in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Tajikistan in the late 1990s. In 2000, the initiative was expanded to include Colombia, Kosovo, Somalia and several West African countries.

In 2002, the focus was on expanding the BPI network to implement a broad mainstreaming strategy.

The BPI has also been introduced into non-conflict contexts, and the Ecuadorian Red Cross became the first National Society to incorporate it in its national development plan. More than 200 staff and volunteers have been trained in the BPI methodology.